All linear amplifiers distort the signal at some power level. This distortion produces intermodulation products when multiple signals are present. Intermodulation products are undesirable because they cause interference and crosstalk. Standards have been set to limit the level of these unwanted signals in transmitters. To meet these standards, methods of reducing distortion have been developed.
The most common method is called feedback. Feedback works well at low frequencies but it becomes a problem at ultra high frequencies. At these frequencies two basic methods are generally used. They are predistortion and feed forward.
Predistortion involves producing a distortion similar to the distortion being generated by the linear amplifier and adding it at the input in the correct gain, phase and delay to produce cancellation of the distortion at the output of the linear amplifier. This method requires matching the distortion characteristics of two amplifiers and hence limits the amount of correction that can be obtained.
The feed forward method does not have this limitation because it separates out the distortion generated in the linear amplifier itself, and then adds it back with gain, phase, and delay adjusted for maximum cancellation. The amount of distortion reduction available using feed forward is limited by the accuracy of the gain and phase adjustments. Continuous precision trimming of these adjustments is necessary to achieve and maintain the maximum distortion reduction.